Who has the best stereo equipment?
 

I'm about to purchase the stereo equipment for the Camaro. I told Troy I'm not about the big sub boxes ,amp racks, ect. I like nice clean sound nothing obnoxious . I want a head unit with nav ,we are going to use one sub so Troy wants a Five channel amp and good quality speakers. The amp and sub will all be hidden I don't like this stuff showing. What is the best on the market for these items. I don't want any junk KRACKOMATIC crap! Let me here what you guys think. I haven't purchased stereo equipment in years.

alpine head units, jl audio amps and speakers. period.

X2 on an Alpine head unit and the JL Audio amp -- the JL Audio HD 900/5 would be great paired with a set of there C5 components but might not be enough for a set of Hertz, Diamond Audio etc... And for the sub for a small sealed enclosure its hard to beat a JL Audio 10W6 or even a 10W3.

If you go with an Alpine head unit get a Alpine Imprint Module (PXA-H100) and mount it in the trunk close to your amps that way you are only running one AiNet cable from the head unit to the module in the trunk and then your RCA's run from the module to the amps (you will have to buy a long AiNet cable as the one with the Imprint Module is not long enough to run to the trunk)

Not only do you have only one wire for the running the length of the car instead of a bunch of RCA's you are able to tune the system from the imprint via microphone. I have a similar setup in mine.

900/5 is a great amp and will run a complete 4spkr /subwoofer setup with no problems. I run it in my 69 with c5 components /c2 6x9s and w3 sub.
Kills. and its clean.

5 channel amp JL 900/5 no questions, JL low profile sub, and either JL speakers or Hertz. head unit Kenwood 990 or something similar. That is a fairly standard package for us on most our audio installs.

Pound for pound sound for sound an iPod isn't bad. :underchair:

Sounds familiar :lol: :cheers:

:lol: if it ain't broke!

ASKED,ANSWERED,AND ORDERED!! Thanx Raj and Mike:thankyou:

Real men run McIntosh amps --- and Focal speakers...


Glad you found what you wanted!

I guess I got old because I could care less about the radio in my Camaros. I think I have turned the radio on in Mayhem once to make sure it turned on. I like to hear the car run.

Can't find an argument to that point!

http://www.kenwoodusa.com/Car_Entert..._n_Navigation/
Kenwood is the brand that you would want and the new top of the line model DNN990HD works with ISIS system


I believe Doom has the ISIS system, and only that receiver will work. Requires another box from ISIS, plus you have to send the ISIS system hardware back to ISIS to do some hardware changes. (Just give Jay a call and he tell you the process). Actually, I was already to go with Alpine, I went to several stores that sells both brands. They recommend Kenwood over Alpine.

The receiver you can buy mail order, but if you want the best quality amps with a USA warranty. Then it is best to test out the amp and speakers. I still do this with my home audio setup.

Jeff

Mario,

Before you $pend all that money on a stereo system, I'd test out the tapes yer gonna play first...

:secret:

:hello:

^^ THIS ^^

A buddy asked me the other day when I would get around to putting some "jams" in my Nova. A cammed up BBC is all the jams it will ever need.


Jeff-

Charley I feel the same way . That's why I told Troy to keep it basic and hidden.

Charley can't hear anything after driving this anyway - so stereo is a waste....







HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA







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Driving this one might not have helped either...lol

Ding Ding Ding we have a winner. Miracle ear promotional car..

I also think the guys promoting certain stereos should have a 1 min video crank it up blast off and let us decide!!!!!

Now you're talkin' !!



What do we get the winner?? Chicken dinner?

"the next nutcase" :rofl:

Mario, I went with the Kenwood DNN990HD.

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...while cruising down the interstate at 80mph. I've often wondered if the high end stereo was actually worth it on our cars with all the other noises.

My Nomad has (not my car anymore) a big killer stereo --- and on a long trip say from Seattle down to Reno for Hot August Nights --- it was used a lot... and with enough speakers and power -- YES you can overcome the other noises....


Having said that -- my last two cars have NO stereo in them at all. Of course in the roadster - it would be absolutely useless. I'm sure in the drop top '33 - that would also be the case.

The thing is -- with the new small really high quality headphones such as Beats etc -- and an iPod or even a cellphone now -- if you want some music on a long trip it's pretty easy just to slip those in and cruise.

I totally agree Greg. Before I started redoing my Chevelle, it had two JL Audio 12" W7's powered by a 1000/1 JL Audio monoblock amp. Midrange and highs were handled by Focal 3-way components powered by a four channel JL Audio 450/4 amp. So, oh yes...without a reasonable doubt, even with the 509 big block rumbling, you could hear it a block away. It was way overkill...way too much though. I'm gonna tone it down a bit when I do the stereo this time. I think I'm gonna go with 2 or 3 JL Audio 10" W7's. That'll still be plenty. I may even do 8" W7 subs.

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I'm about a month late with my answer (as usual), but a nice alternative to the JL Audio HD900/5 is the Alpine PDX-V9.

They are both 100wx4 + 500wx1, very similar in size and the Alpine is about $300 cheaper. I have the Alpine in my DD and am very happy with it. I run 3 older Alpines in the Camaro and they do the job.

I used to do SPL and sound quality stereo competitions back in the Late 90's and early 2000's. Both my brother (who also competed) and I were invited to Nationals but never went due to expense. I've got a couple of huge trophies but they didn't give out any good cash unfortunately...... :shakehead:

Anyway, at that time it was Clarion, Eclipse, Audiocontrol and Soundstream that were at the top of the heap and I wasted a whole lot of money on all four. Everything has changed as it does with electronics and I don't know my butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to the brands anymore. I can still tell what sounds good though. My ears still work.....LOL

My 4, 12" sub setup that won me a triple points competition is now in my living room as my home theater sub and my Soundstream 10.2 is down in the shop. I went to get my purple Clarion 6.5 components out the other day to test fit them in my Camaro and the cones have become brittle and cracked...really sucks since I loved those speakers. I even called Clarion about re-coning them but it seems it's not worth it. I've still got 20ft of 1ga wire laying about too.

I'm pretty sure some things still hold true. Get the best component speakers you can afford and a really nice crossover to get the right frequencies going to the right places. Don't skimp on Amplifiers either and check their RMS ratings, not peak. If you want to save some money you can go for a slightly cheaper head unit and sub woofers. Don't by junky ones or anything but a good x-over will hide head unit flaws by cleaning and boosting the signal and box design has more to do with sub sound than anything else unless you are running them to the limit. Back in the day, my philosophy was to buy cheap subs but the best amplifier I could find and beat the living crap out of them.

It's 2014 if you're really trying to step up you run an iPad mini as your head unit. Alpine and pioneer are trash. If you must go with a double din Kenwood is the only way to go. The features, tunability and Garmin navi in the Kenwood destroy alpine and pioneer. As far as amps and subs JL is still top of the food chain.

The kenwood stuff isn't nearly as reliable. Needs frequent software updates and doesn't have near the sound quality of the alpine head units. I am a dealer for both kenwood excelon and alpine. I'd rather have the alpine

Did exactly what you told me!

My dealer told me the opposite. The cool feature that Kenwood Excelon has is the ability to update the receiver. Software updates are a cool feature that has been shown in home equipment as well. My Denon AVR-5308 has this feature and saved me from buying new receivers. The software updates is advantage because of smartphone updates. While Alpine you have to update the entire Chinese made head unit.

Also, if you have an ISIS system, then ISIS can be updated as well. I originally bought my ISIS setup in 2010 from a group purchase. I just got mine back from ISIS and they updated mine to the latest specs for ISIS Intouch.

Jeff

yes it is nice that they can be upgraded, but they often quit working and lockup for no reason. Its fine if everything is working like its supposed and you want to do a software upgrade, but when the thing quits working as it should and you have to make a special trip back to your dealer to get it fixed, it is a pain both to the customer, because they don't know whats going on and its a pain to the dealer because we generally have to stop everything we are working on and fix it when the customer comes by. Then you look up the software upgrade and it will say it fixes this and improves that. well they should of figured that out before they shipped it.

So, if Customer A has a new Iphone 5S with IOS7, but he bought the head unit in the Spring before the new version IOS7 was shipped in the Fall. Then how is the company going to fix something like that? I am sure later on as Kenwood updates their head units to 4G LTE, then you see automatically updates from the cloud.

Almost all the components on your PC is firmware upgradeable. For example a DVD burner will have firmware updates or a monitor will have driver updates. It be nice if everything worked as manufactured, but there is too many devices and media on the market.